


Webster’s Dictionary Defines

by Merelymine



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Confessions, Dictionary Definitions, Drinking, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Sorry Not Sorry, Talking, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, figuring it out, of a sort, what to do after the end of the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 15:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19429129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merelymine/pseuds/Merelymine
Summary: “I’ve been thinking,” Aziraphale says contemplatively, well past drunk if the three empty bottles on the table mean anything, eyes on his glass as he swirls the red around, testing. “And I think it’s fairly obvious we were made for each other.”Crowley’s heart takes that moment to remember that it is, at its core, human, and does a very complicated dance in his chest entirely without his permission.“Pardon?”, he chokes out.





	Webster’s Dictionary Defines

“I’ve been thinking,” Aziraphale says contemplatively, well past drunk if the three empty bottles on the table mean anything, eyes on his glass as he swirls the red around, testing. “And I think it’s fairly obvious we were made for each other.”

Crowley’s heart takes that moment to remember that it is, at its core, human, and does a very complicated dance in his chest entirely without his permission. 

“Pardon?”, he chokes out around the Châteauneuf-du-Pape that’s just valiantly tried to shoot out his nose. 

Aziraphale doesn’t seem to notice. “I think we were made for each other,” he repeats with absolute conviction.

A silent moment.

“Literally,” he clarifies. As if that clarifies anything.

“Huh,” is all that Crowley can think to say, watching him carefully in case he needs to beat a hasty retreat for his own sanity. It’s not anything he hasn’t thought himself in the last six thousand years, it’s just that he was fairly damn sure that the angel had no clue.

Aziraphale nods, finally looking up from his glass and directly at Crowley. His eyes are fuzzed with alcohol, that brilliant blue of his that Crowley’s never seen anywhere else and absolutely guileless. They’re a couple of bottles deep, but hey, what else is there to do when the world hasn’t ended and you’ve come out on top?

“Yes,” he says, drunkenly adamant. Crowley can’t break eye contact and thank-fucking-whomever for his ever present sunglasses. “I think that you were put here to tempt and I was put here to thwart and yes.” Aziraphale gestures vaguely, wine sloshing dangerously close to the rim of his large glass. “Balance, that’s the fellow.”

“Balance,” Crowley parrots, downing his near full glass and reaching for the bottle to refill it. He’s annoyed and relieved in the same breath and fuck all that sort of feeling. The drum of his heartbeat settles a bit on its own, and he’s annoyed by that too. Stupid too human body and it’s stupid too human reflexes. He can’t even enjoy the wine when he has to chug it like this.

“Ineffable, really,” Aziraphale adds, tipping his glass in a half-hearted salute and pleased as punch with himself for his little leap of logic and faith if his small smile means anything. Crowley hates it and loves it in turn, and that’s really very annoying too. He remembers with sudden, horrible clarity a burning bookshop, a fire that smelled like sacrament and consecration, and being absolutely, positively sure that his angel had been destroyed. It’s all he can do to not snap the delicate stem of the Bordeaux glass he’s holding. He should damn well sober up.

He drains the glass instead, and sets the damn thing down on the coffee table in front of Aziraphale’s horribly tacky (and ridiculously comfortable) sofa, twisting a little to face him.

“Ineffable?,” he parrots again, incredulous, and the strain in his voice, the octave break and skip is audible to his own ears.

Aziraphale turns curious eyes towards him.

“Yes?”

“In-fucking-effable?!” Crowley nearly screeches. The angel’s brows furrow in response. Crowley barrels on.

“Everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been through and helped each other with, and you’re still stuck on ineffability?”

Aziraphale focuses on him, his expression that nervous thing that he gets when he’s trying to convince himself of something, a shiver of a smile on his lips. He opens his mouth to say something but Crowley grabs his hand, the one not holding the wineglass, and stops whatever it is before it can start. “Angel, you and I are anything but the result of some divine plan.”

Aziraphale looks down between them, nervous smile shifting into something quiet and small and threads his fingers with Crowley’s. Squeezes. “What else would you call it, dear boy?”

Eyes as blue as oceans and fuck if Crowley isn’t drowning like he always is. He tsks, the s growing long and sibilant at the end. “I make my own decisssionsss,” he says, staring down at their hands. Aziraphale hums.

“Webster’s dictionary defines,” he begins, and Crowley groans, dramatically rolling his eyes and thumping his head back against the cushions. Aziraphale narrows his own. “Webster’s dictionary defines,” he repeats firmly, sounding like the beginning of every best man speech at every wedding for the last twenty years, “ineffable as ‘too great or too extreme to be expressed in words’”, he squeezes Crowley’s thin fingers between his own, strong and soft. Crowley peeks an eye open at him, curious.

Aziraphale looks solemn, setting his glass down on the table next to Crowley’s before reaching out, turning towards him and clasping his hand on his knee. “I don’t know any other word for it,” he says, looking once again nervous and a little more sober. Crowley wishes he could drink the rest of the bottle, wishes he could look away from those bright blue eyes. He swallows instead. Sits up to mirror the angel and tries for bravery even though he’s not very good at it. Never has been.

“I sssssupposse,” he says, slowly, drawing it out, “when you put it that way.” Squeezes the angel’s hand that’s still holding his. Looks steadfastly into those eyes. He’s six thousand years old and he is so very, very tired. “I certainly don’t have any other wordsss for what you are to me.”

There. That’s it. That’s as bare, as brave as he can manage and he can only hope it’s not too much.

Aziraphale smiles, still nervous but not overwhelmed (“you go too fast for me”- Crowley has heard the echoes of those six words for the last fifty some odd years, has not known what to do with them but still couldn’t manage to forget them). Crowley finds himself feeling a little overwhelmed, and instead of wishing it away, of making some snide remark and deflecting the tension he just- lets it exist. Leans into it.

The dim light of the bookshop’s back room casts Aziraphale in a hazy golden glow, the wine softening his expression even more, ethereal and beautiful. Crowley doesn’t realize he’s mumbled the last out loud until the angel ducks his head, his fingers gripping Crowley’s own just this side of too tight.

“Crowley...”

“Angel,” he answers, wonderingly. This is unprecedented, not that he’s pushed. He’s wanted, maybe. Dreamed in that century he spent asleep, certainly. 

Aziraphale licks his lips, searches Crowley’s face for something, his gaze almost beseeching. His eyelashes are fine and almost white blond, flutter along with the nervous swallow of his throat. They’ve leaned so close together that he can see the fine dash of freckles across the angel’s nose, blending into the appealing pink that tints his full cheeks. Crowley doesn’t dare to even breathe in case it upsets the fine tightrope they’re treading.

Good thing he does’t need to.

“Can I-“

“Yes,” Crowley answers, before Aziraphale can finish the sentence.

He laughs a little, a startled chime, “You don’t know what I was going to ask!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Crowley says, honest as he can, “the answer’s always yes.”

Aziraphale’s gaze darts down to his mouth, settles on his eyes under the dark lenses.

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

And then they’re kissing, close and wild and human in a way that’s nothing like the way he’s kissed before, back when it was a standard greeting. A hello, how are you, shame about those bandits burning the village down.

This is more, different. His eyes are closed, but his senses full of Aziraphale- the smell of books and leather and the bright green of new growth flooding his senses. The angel’s lips are dry, he tastes of red wine and summer and Crowley shifts forward and threads his free hand through the wild blond curls he’s always wanted to touch. 

They’re softer than they have any right to be and Aziraphale sighs into the kiss, mouth opening just enough for Crowley to push forward and take. Taste. Give him an inch and he’ll take and take and take and there’s a worry, small, in the back of his mind that says ‘too fast, too fast’.

He ignores it.

Shouldn’t have worried anyway. At his core Aziraphale is a sensualist. Ready to feel and touch and catalog every new sensation, and he opens for Crowley beautifully, careful and precise. Hums a little in surprise as Crowley’s tongue tests the seam of his lips, lets him in and meets him with his own, and Crowley’s never kissed like this, prefers to keep his temptations at a professional distance thank-you-very-much, but he lets his body do the thinking for him.

He pulls away eventually, tugs the angel in close and buries his face in the shoulder of his truly awful jacket. Allows his senses to narrow down to the smell of Aziraphale, the warmth of him and the steady circling of his hands up and down his back.

“I thought you were gone,” he mumbles into the jacket. Aziraphale hums in concern but lets him continue. “I thought you were gone and the world wasn’t worth anything without you in it. I wanted to burn in the bookshop with you.”

A kiss against his temple, and a soft sigh.

“I’m here,” the angel says, “I’m not leaving you, not ever again.”

It’s more than enough. There’s time now, all the time in the world, and Crowley feels something settle in his chest, an uneven piece shifting to click in whole.


End file.
